Less Whining, More Truthing

This sounds like a bad made-for-TV movie plot, but honest, it’s one of those “truth is stranger than fiction” stories…

This past fall, my aging, ill, live-in mother, for whom I’m primary caregiver, was hospitalized. It was pretty serious stuff, but her healthcare providers were brilliant, socialism (Medicare) made such medical care possible, and my mother is one determined human being. She spent a week in the hospital and came home, weak and exhausted but on the mend. For the next month, I coordinated meds, weekly visits from three home healthcare workers, follow-up medical appointments, and weekly labs.

Then, just before Thanksgiving, Ray had another heart attack, his 4th, thanks to rotten cholesterol/heart genes and probably a couple decades of road-musician food. We went to our Little Town ER in the wee hours, where there was no cardiologist either on duty or on call, and where he was treated and released because a telehealth cardiologist said his echocardiogram looked okay (and because the Big City hospitals are at capacity). But about 24 hours later, with the heart attack still ongoing, I drove him to the ER of a heart hospital in the Big City, where he was admitted. (A Little Town ER doc had hinted that if you show up in an ER, they have to see you – that doc thought Ray should have been airlifted to the Big City hospital.) You can read a bit about our Big City adventure here: https://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-heart-of-gratitude.html.

Thankfully for all, Mom was spending Thanksgiving with my brothers in a lovely southern location when this happened, so I was free to divide my time between zookeeping here at the Uncannery Row Refuge for All Creatures Haired, Furred, and Feathered, and daily commutes to visit Ray in the Big City. A few more days of hospital living and much more gratitude for brilliant healthcare providers and our socialist Medicare system later, I brought Ray home. He didn’t need a LOT of help when he came home, but he couldn’t exert himself or lift anything over 10 lbs., and he was exhausted, so I found myself caregiving again.

Then, two days after Mom came home, while Ray was still home and beginning rehab at our Little Town hospital, Mom went back into the hospital – our Little Town hospital this time – with new, scary stuff. Another week of hospital life, an almost overwhelming amount of gratitude, and Mom came home again, with new meds and more intensive caregiving requirements.

I remember someone commenting, somewhere during these adventures, that they didn’t know how I could do it all. My answer was that I’m really good at calmly rising to the occasion, but that I sometimes fall apart later, once the crisis is averted. I won’t say I’m prophetic, but a day after Mom got home from her second hospital stay, I woke up with a respiratory plague that turned out to be two weeks of bronchitis (probably – I wasn’t ABOUT to go to the doc and end up Hospital Patient #3). Mom and I both had negative Covid tests during this time, so I knew what I had was likely a run-of-the-mill plague.

For the next little while, the three of us took care of each other. Dear friends gave us porch drop-off’s of dinner rolls, soup, and elderberry syrup, and we isolated. I’ll admit that during my illness (finally letting up now), I may have felt just a wee bit sorry for myself. I may have been a little whiny once or twice. And I may have sent Heart Attack Guy out for groceries and more NyQuil.

But I read something today that shifted things back in perspective for me. It was an article by Toni Bernhard, former law professor, person living with chronic illness, and author of How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers, where she talks about understanding illness from a Buddhist perspective. The article (read the whole article here: https://www.lionsroar.com/illness-and-the-buddhas-prescription/) helped me re-frame my thinking about our household’s recent illnesses, but it also helped me to re-center my thinking about suffering, and life in general, by reminding me of the Four Noble Truths, the foundation of Buddhism:

1. All life is suffering. It is a fact, Buddha reminds us, that ALL humans go through non-pleasant experiences: birth, pain, illness, aging, grief, wanting what we don’t have, not wanting what we have, losing what we cherish.

2. Dukkha is the cause of suffering. In the original language of Buddhist texts, the word usually translated as suffering is dukkha, but its meaning is closer to an amalgamation of dissatisfaction, discomfort, stress, unease. And here was Bernard’s commentary about this Noble Truth, and the re-centering revelation for me: It isn’t the “ten thousand sorrows” of human existence – the experiences themselves – that cause our suffering; it’s our own inability to accept their reality as a normal, expected part of life that causes it. It's our misguided expectation that we should/could always be “happy” that causes our suffering.

3. Suffering can be overcome. By fully comprehending the reality of suffering as part of life, we can end our dis-ease.

4. The eightfold path is the way to overcome suffering. The eightfold path is Buddha’s teaching about HOW to KNOW (not just understand intellectually, but KNOW) the nature of reality by living “correctly” (probably also a mistranslation, but you can read more about the eightfold path here: https://www.lionsroar.com/what-is-eightfold-path/).

So today, on Mom’s 86th birthday, I’m caretaking, coughing and blowing my nose ad infinitum, throwing down the Emergen-C, sanitizing like a madwoman, and feeling a lot less sorry for myself. I’m accepting my own illness as a normal part of my life – I don’t have to LIKE it, just ACCEPT it – and learning what I can from it, maybe about my own limitations, my stubbornness when it comes to taking care of the caretaker, and the healing properties of Doritos and French onion dip, in moderation of course.

The Four Noble Truths

The Heart of Gratitude

Thanksgiving Synchronicities. Wow. I’m sitting in the waiting room at the Heart Hospital while Ray’s getting his fluids topped off through a femoral artery. We’ve been through this before, so I’m worried but not panicking. This is his 3rd heart attack, 4th if we count the time we got here just early enough to head it off with another stent. He’s a pretty fit, active, non-smoking guy, still working past his retirement age, who eats a healthy diet of mostly unprocessed, home-cooked food. But he has a genetic history of heart disease and high cholesterol, and he probably has some damage from his earlier life as a smoking, fast-food-eating road musician. Anyway, we ignored the medical advice of our Little Town ER doc to go home and follow up with a cardiologist in December, and we drove ourselves here to the Big City in time. Again. 

So I’m sitting here, and I must have my invisible I WILL LISTEN sign flashing, because an older man sitting across from me says, “Where are you from?” I tell him, then he starts talking. He doesn’t stop for at least 30 minutes. He tells me everything about his life—his wife’s dementia and recent falls, the blood clot they’re blasting in her, their kids and grandkids and where every one of them lives and what they do, his and his wife’s childhoods (they went to different schools in the same town…their birthdays are two days apart…they’re both 78), his military service, his career as a buildings and maintenance specialist with Indian Health Service.

Then he tells me about his family growing up: his white father, his Native mother, his siblings. Then he tells me about how his mother had been sent to the Indian boarding school in Pine Ridge as a kid, and how, when she was 16 and operating the mangle (a giant industrial hot roller machine, like the Godzilla version of rollers on old wringer-washers), she lost her left hand in the machine, and how he could still see her, diaper pins in her teeth, diapering his baby brother one-handed, and how, because of her, he and his wife and kids got free Covid vaccines and boosters at IHS.

I’m mostly silent, with a nod or a “wow,” now and then, and I’m grateful that I can give him this space to talk. Finally, he says he should probably get back upstairs to his wife, and I say, “We have a lot to be thankful for, don’t we.” And I really mean that. We DO have a lot to be thankful for. We are both going to leave the Heart Hospital with the people we love.

But I’m also a little stunned by his story, thinking again of the girls and women of the Magdalene laundries, and what so many of them, like this man’s mother, may have lost to the mangles, the ironing machines, the industry and cruelty of institutions that take children away and lock them up. I’m also thinking that we cruel humans seem determined to make Magdalenes wherever we go.

Today, Ray is home and resting. That he’s here is a testament to the brilliance of modern medicine, to compassionate, skilled caregivers, to our willingness to trust our own intuition, and maybe mostly, to the miracles of the human body—as one arterial branch in Ray’s heart clogged, shut down, and died, his heart was already busy making a new branch to replace it.

This Thanksgiving, we will have to miss an epic family gathering in a lovely southern location, with four generations of family, including my 80-something mom, all my siblings, and their partners and kids. I will miss the Bailey’s and eggnog, the dominoes, the moons over the lake, the cut-throat Scrabble matches, the singing, laughing, and non-stop grazing. Still, I’m SO grateful they can gather, that they can Zoom/Skype/Facetime (so we can witness the mayhem), and that Ray and I will be here together to appreciate life, this unending, unfolding trail of miracles.

Crone on, sisters.

In literature at least, women are often lumped into three categories, divided by age: maiden, mother, crone. They’re also sometimes divided by proclivity into Madonna/Whore, but that’s a false dichotomy invented by men, that has more to do with THEIR proclivities than with any real sense of women.

I freely and proudly admit that I’m entering (have entered? am well into?) my crone years. And I’m LOVING it. In spite of the surprises wrought by gravity and a few decades of a carb-heavy diet, being a crone has advantages:

1. Lack of estrogen and a slowing metabolism mean that crones often take on a wee bit of weight. If one lives in the north, putting on a few extra lbs for winter provides necessary insulation. In addition, thigh friction adds extra heat and does not, as is often believed, spark fires.

2. People listen to crones. I suppose some think wrinkles = wisdom, or that experience and time have tested our theories and practices, so that we’ve winnowed things down to only what’s true and workable.

3. People don’t listen to crones. Older women become invisible, which has two important advantages: (1) It proves my theory that we’re all just animals, and that once past reproductive possibility, crones are of no interest to younger people except as nannies/grannies (ironically and falsely, older men are often considered MORE wise/dignified/worthy of respect and even veneration in their “golden” years – and I would dearly love to smack whomever came up with that “golden” expression); (2) It allows crones to say and do pretty much whatever the heck we want, so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else or draw the attention of the constabulary.

4. Crones can comfortably hold contradictory views.

5. Heavy, pendulous, crone-y breasts make a decent “third hand” when gathering up armloads of small items that pile up on the dining room table and that must occasionally be redistributed to other parts of the house.

6. Crones have loads of ready excuses for NOT engaging in the hard-body exercise required of desirable youth, including but not limited to arthritis, new hips/knees/ankles/shoulders, exhaustion, swooning, and vapors.

7. Crones’ “hobbies” are seen as quaint. This is good cover for the fact that I could knit a straightjacket from which you’d never escape, or that I could be burying anything in that jungle of tomato and cucumber plants, or that I’m teaching one of my le petit canaries to attack on command (a la Hitchcock).

8. Sky’s the limit when it comes to crone wardrobe. Wanna wear white shoes after Labor Day? Have at it. In fact, wear white go-go boots. Wanna wear a crocheted halter top? You’re invisible, remember? Do it. Wanna wear a moo-moo with an all-over chili pepper print? Can you find a head wrap and handbag to match? Some summer days, I like to don a Sophia Loren headscarf and huge sunglasses, put on a bikini (I tuck in as much of me as possible—I’m not a monster) and high heels, and stroll on the beach…in another town.

My great grandmother Effie.

9. Crones can take advantage of the super early morning Covid shopping hours, when we don’t have to worry as much about unmasked, unvaccinated idiots (I've lost all patience and understanding for these willful infectors), bumper carts, or aisle rage.

10. Carl Jung postulated that in our post-childbearing years (he said one’s 40’s), we “reclaim ourselves,” that we rediscover our own selfhood, including our interests and our beliefs/spirituality. Since 60 is the new 40, I’m excited to be in this phase. So far, I’ve rediscovered napping, wine, Troll dolls, and sunflower seeds in the shell. I’m exploring my atheism and how that squares with my absolute belief in an intelligent Universe—pantheism maybe? And I’m pretty sure tap dancing is in my “rediscovering” future, so I’ll let you know when I have a recital coming up…

September Squirreling

Recently, the nights here in eastern South Dakota have been dipping below 50 degrees. We throw open the windows, happy to hear the owls and breathe in non-air-conditioned night air. But these cooler nights of early fall also trigger a strange annual phenomenon in many prairie people: September Squirreling.

It might start with something really innocuous—you make two lasagnas instead of one, and you freeze the extra “in case of company.” Or, you impulse-buy 5 lbs. of steel cut oats at the food co-op. You order three bottles of high-potency Vitamin D. Then, before you’re really aware of it, things ramp up—you freeze 12 ice cube trays of pesto; you buy lugs of peaches and spend a long, messy day making and canning jam; you can 60 quarts of every conceivable tomato product—roasted tomato and veggie sauce, raw-pack tomatoes, whole roasted Romas and Sunsweet cherries; you dehydrate a gallon bag of basil. You’ve turned your home into an industrial kitchen, and you might be speaking a little street Italian under your breath.

But wait. You’re also freezer-stashing gifts: loaves of lemon poppyseed bread, apple pies, birthday cheesecakes, chocolate chip cookies, Chubby Chipmunk truffles. When you open the freezer door to find room for another 4 loaves of zucchini bread your brilliant baker friend brought over, you notice 1 lb bags of Vietnamese cinnamon and ground cardamom, a 12-pack of 6” unscented beeswax candles, bags of holy basil and minced onion flakes, and 5 lb each of regular and decaf Café Altura coffee beans. Who the heck ordered all this stuff? Oh wait…YOU did.

Winter chili, spaghetti, shrimp creole...

Peppers the size of a quart jar.

Peach preserves for winter toast.

Stocking the larder.

If you read literature set in the 1800’s on the prairie (I highly recommend a short story called “Winter” by Kit Reed), you’ll discover the hereditary, maybe genetic, origins of September Squirreling: As Jon Snow says, winter is coming. Every hardy plains dweller worth her salt (Note to Self: Order 5 lbs of Celtic salt ASAP) knows you need to STOCK THE LARDER NOW!! You’ll need provisions for when the snow is piled higher than your doors & windows, cutting off all light and your access to the outside world.

Nevermind that you live in town, in the 21st century, where the city plows keep your streets clear all winter, and that your snowblower gives you unfettered access to everything year-round, 24/7. Nevermind that you can have curbside delivery of groceries, hardware, lumber, or anything Walmart sells, all winter long. Nevermind. Because you’re really just a higher-order squirrel, burying nuts and seeds in the yard. “Putting by” is in your pioneer, homesteader DNA.

So today, in early September when the high will be 88, I’ll be divvying up 20 lb bags of canary and parrot food into gallon bags for the freezer, so we’ll have plenty of avian antics for entertainment during “the dark time.” And if I make waaaaay too much goulash for dinner, well, I know what to do with the leftovers.

Wendel worries, will there be enough?

Don't worry. Be happy (as the Bhutanese).

Death. It’s not something we talk about in the U.S. We don’t even like the word, so we use metaphors that imply fun travel and/or a little extra sleep: rest in peace, the long sleep, gone home, left for her great reward, even dirt nap. We often don’t talk with those who are dying about the inevitable death that’s coming, and often, our own “death plans” (funerals or memorials, body disposition, wills, etc.) are made in private – almost in secret – if at all.

But I’ve been thinking a LOT about death lately. In our immediate family and circle of friends, seven people have either died, or we’ve only just learned about their deaths, since the beginning of this year. I also think Covid and the newer Delta threat act like annoying floats that won’t let thoughts of death sink to the deep waters of my denial mind, as they normally would, so death feels scary, sad, and ever present.

Recently, my youngest son sent me an interesting BBC article about how the Bhutanese people attribute at least some of their happiness to living with and thinking about death on a daily basis (https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20150408-bhutans-dark-secret-to-happiness). They have a tradition of thinking about death at least 5 times a day, and the Himalayan country is considered one of the happiest on earth. Images and icons of death are everywhere in the country, so even kids are exposed to the idea of death from the time they’re born. Of course, Bhutan is a mainly Buddhist country, so the Buddhist belief in samsara, the cycle of birth-death-rebirth, might also soften any fear of dying.

Now, thanks to a friend, I learned about an app for my iPhone (and watch) called WeCroak. It sends me 5 meditations or contemplations about death every day. When a new contemplation comes through, I first see a screen that says, “Don't forget, you’re doing to die,” and then I get the little quote or statement about death. When the first couple of reminders came through, the initial screen gave me a wee jolt, I’ll admit. I talked back. “Nuh uh,” I said. “Shut up.” But now, it makes me laugh, sometimes out loud and at inappropriate times, like the Walmart checkout or the dentist’s waiting room.

Someone in the BBC article said that living with death by thinking about it daily, made her “seize the moment.” I get that. Our time is limited. We should learn to use it more wisely.

This doesn't mean we don't cry, grieve, or miss someone, or that we should run around being giddy about someone's death. It just means that we could learn to see death as a natural part of the life cycle of all beings - like being born, going through puberty, getting wrinkies - and not as the Big, Personal, Final, Lossity-Loss and Permanent Horrific End so many Americans (and others) FEAR.

We have another “celebration of life” to attend this weekend, and I feel like (in my Pollyanna brain at least) my 5 daily reminders will help me to truly celebrate that life, and to embrace our friend's death as a passage and a shared part of our humanity. I’m not sure the 5 daily reminders have made me happy as a Bhutanese yet, but we’ll see…

I don't quite get this retirement thing...yet.

I officially retired at the end of May, and boy, do I have BIG PLANS for a retirement of bliss! But so far, we’ve put in our garden, gone to visit kids in the Black Hills, I’m working on a new manuscript of my own and sending off the last one to try and find a publisher. I finished one book review and I have a manuscript to mull over for a friend, and I’m ALWAYS planning another trip to Ireland in my mind. I’ve taught a week-long online poetry class to grade school kids, and I’ve also been gathering materials, schedules, and knowledge (most of it in my head) to hand off to the person taking over the student organization I’ve shepherded for the past 11+ years. Oh, and our youngest son got married in a beautiful country wedding, and our youngest grandchild (grandkid #6) was born, both in June.

In other words, I haven’t figured out yet how to hit the brakes. Anyone who teaches, knows that during the school year there is NO TIME when there’s nothing to do—watching TV, spending time with family, gardening, etc., are all and always done at the expense of something work related you’re PUTTING OFF and about which you feel extremely guilty. And that’s been my pace for 25 years. So the idea that I don’t have at least a dozen work-related tasks hanging over my head, is foreign to me.

By way of remedy, I got out my MUSE (https://choosemuse.com/muse-2/), which is a cool meditation aide that works on the principle of biofeedback (biofeedback was popular in the 70s so the idea felt familiar to me). I haven’t “Mused” yet since my retirement, but I got it out, and that’s a step, right?

Other ideas for slowing to a sprint are bubbling up, and they mostly involve some version of camping. We don’t have a camper, but we have a big SUV, and I slept in plenty of cars and vans in my hippie youth, so if I take enough Advil, I’m pretty sure I could do it again. And we have a tent. Accommodating our dogs might be a trick, but we’ve got four human kids between us, so we’ve both slept many nights pummeled by little heads, feet, and elbows. How much worse could dogs in a tent be?

We started kayaking last summer, and so far, we’ve been out on the water once this summer. Right now, we shove the kayaks in the back of our old pickup in an awesome rack Ray built. We’d like to travel with them, and once we figure out a way for two mid-age people with various arthritic joints to get the rack and kayaks on top of the SUV, we’ll be golden.

Another current possibility involves fishing. I know nothing about fishing except what I’ve seen on Alaska’s Last Frontier (I’m pretty sure I could land and process a halibut if I had to). My research so far has been Googling “best beginner rod and reel combo.” I’ll admit I don’t like baiting hooks, and I like even less taking fish off once they’re caught and then…argh…cleaning them. But I love the casting, sitting, waiting, and ultimately eating parts, so I think I could channel my Irish coastal ancestors (aka “grow up”) enough to do the not-so-fun stuff. I don’t trust my balance enough to fish from my kayak, but I have a super romantic image of myself sitting on a secluded dock in my red sunhat, slathered with SPF 250, holding my Plussino 24-ton carbon matrix telescopic pole with 12 +1 shielded bearings stainless steel BB spinning reel. You can see it, right?

Oh yeah, and I bought myself an indestructible (polycarbon/plastic) travel guitar. Ray has a djembe, a bodhran, and a set of bongos for travel drums. Those RV glampers will positively swoon when we launch into our soul-stirring “Puff the Magic Dragon/Michael Row the Boat Ashore/Kumbaya” medley. I have a plan in my head for a tip jar made from a recycled 2 lb. Folger’s can, some glitter glue, and neon orange duct tape.

So I really am planning a blissful retirement. Of course, I live in South Dakota, and I haven’t formulated my plans yet for our 9 months of winter (kidding…it’s only 6 months). AND Covid isn’t finished with us, so we may be back in quarantine hiding out from Delta if unvaccinated idiots don’t start thinking about someone besides themselves. AND if I can learn to say NO to the projects, board positions, and part-time jobs that keep popping up in my email, I’ll have this retirement thing mastered in no time!

Writerly Wrevelations

I write poems (you can find my books here: Please Buy These Books ASAP!) Over the past 14 months or so of lockdown, I’ve had an epiphany or two and faced a few come-to-jaysus moments about my own writing and process. I wish I’d realized/discovered/faced these a few decades back, so I could have gotten more done by now: 

1. Most writers I know (referred to henceforth in this piece as “writers”) are crazy insecure. We think we’re imposters. Each of us thinks we’re the BEST. WRITER. EVER. We think no one will want to read what we write. We’re not sure WE want to read what we write. We need approval. We don’t need no stinking approval. Yes, we do. You like me, right? RIGHT?!? 

2. I haven’t decided yet if writers are the “precious and private” (Bukowski) hermits of the stereotype, or we’re just the wordy, nerdy kids with masking-taped glasses no one will pick in Red Rover, so we preemptively claim loner-dom, because see #1. 

3. Writers have enormous, ponderous, stumbling egos, fragile as antique bone china. We know that a rising tide lifts all ships, but it isn’t in our nature to help/promote/mentor other writers; we’re more like frightened roller derby queens rounding a curve, elbows out and ready. Generosity is something we have to consciously work at (somewhere in the backs of our minds, we think YOU getting published means I CAN’T). 

4. I wouldn’t be here, in writerly terms, without the generosity of some amazing folks who've mastered #3. 

5. Cats are demanding, aloof, and disinterested. They dish out emotional abuse. Most writers have cats (self-abuse, see #1). A few have dogs (constant approval, see #1). 

6. What conditions do I need to write? Complete solitude. Total silence. Time. That’s why I have six full/part-time jobs and live in a house with other humans, dogs, parrots, canaries, and 75 houseplants that need watering or repotting on a perpetual, unending schedule (self-sabotage and martyrdom, see #1). 

7. I started writing when I was in elementary school. When I was in grad school, I learned “the craft” (like witchcraft, but with MLA style; poetry as technically precise as it was bloodless). After a decade of grad school recovery, I remembered how to write. 

8. It’s best not to have your desk facing a window (see #14). 

9. All writers want to be published. Some writers lie about this (see #1). 

10. Publishing is the devil. It’s a numbers game. It’s like weight loss: you really do have to burn more calories than you eat. To get something published, you have to continuously send off work in huge numbers (then cast spells, light candles, repeat incantations, and dance naked at midnight around a manual typewriter). Rinse & repeat ad infinitum. Publishing takes 25% talent and 75% stamina. 

11. A mere handful of writers (you and I are not among them) will achieve enough name recognition to improve the odds. Some will even BEAT the odds, and people will start ASKING to publish their work. They are the writerly version of the rare albino freetail bat. The rest of us boring brown bats might as well hang from the lampshade, pound down a bag of Doritos, and binge a season of Fortitude. 

12. Winning prizes for your writing is really cool. It costs big $$$ to enter contests. Again, those odds: the more you spend…you get the idea. 

13. All writers want to be published and win cool prizes. 

14. Any writer who claims: (1) It just pours out of me in one draft; (2) It’s like I’m channeling the muse; (3) I never revise, so I can keep it honest and authentic; (4) I just write down what the voices say, or some such nonsense, is either revising in secret or writes horrid drivel. 

15. I’m a procrastiwriter. Writing is hard work. And there are dishes to do, grout to scrub, socks to darn, backyard bird feeders to watch, junk drawers to organize. If I completely rearrange my home office, I can create a more productive writing space. Maybe some candles. Aromatherapy. More plants. Maybe I should build shelves behind my desk. If I took the kayak out for paddle, it would relax and inspire me…

WARNING: WOMEN ON THE MOVE

I have to share a story about my trip to Ireland…NOT because it’s about Ireland and we just celebrated a GRAND St. Patrick’s Day, but because two things this week have been pretty triggering for me: the murders of six Asian women in Atlanta at the hands of some schmuck who was “suffering” from sexual addiction, and this meme that popped up in Facebook this week…

I was visiting a city in the south,  and a pretty well-known poet, at the behest of his uncle whom I knew, set up a poetry reading for me. Tom (not his real name) had set up this reading in a downtown pub. I can’t remember the name of the pub, so let’s call it O’Flynn’s, starting at 9 p.m. that night. I didn’t have a car in Ireland, so I was hoofing it or taking taxis everywhere.

Early in the day, I texted Tom to ask for O’Flynn’s address. Much texting back and forth ensued, and I’ll never know the story on O’Flynn’s, but Tom never did give me an address. He told me it was “right around the corner” from my hotel, inside another business, and I could easily walk there. I went downstairs to the hotel’s front desk and asked the clerk to help me locate this place. She couldn’t find it. She guessed it was one of two possible locations, but she couldn’t be sure. I texted Tom again and asked for a street address so I could GPS. He didn’t give me one and said, instead, just to “head down XX Street, and you can’t miss it.”

So (1) I was a WOMAN traveling alone not just in an unfamiliar city, but an unfamiliar country; (2) It was after dark; (3) I was supposed to meet a man I’d never met and didn’t know; (4) I was in the city centre; (5) I was walking; and (6) I had no idea where I was going – I could set out in ANY direction, so vague were the directions, and never find the place.

Finally, I texted Tom and told him thank you, but I was staying in. I didn't know if this was to have been a “featured” reading, part of an open mic, or what kind of event it was. I’ll never know because Tom no longer speaks to me, declaring me “rude” and “inconsiderate” for canceling. It still bothers me, not because Tom decided I was rude—I’m a big girl and can take not everyone liking me—but because Tom, like SO MANY MEN, couldn’t or wouldn’t try to understand WHY I canceled. He didn't GET IT.

It’s so much easier for men to move about (especially white men) that many, I think, can’t imagine feeling vulnerable or being house-bound by fear. Like almost every woman I know, I’ve been accosted, confronted, and abused (only emotionally, for me, praise the goddesses) by men throughout my life. I’m not sure Tom could see the forest for his white male privileged trees.

In spite of still being angry that Tom, a well-educated man and gifted poet who, in the age of Me Too should have known better (or should have offered to pick me up), DOESN’T know better or wasn’t sensitive enough to empathize, I hope we can meet again someday and mend that fence. I love his poetry, and I think he’s an important voice in contemporary Irish poetry. 

I also think that until MEN care about and work for the safety of women, we’d better keep the Wolverine claws (pepper spray, personal alarms, lifeguard whistles, etc.) handy.

Love Letter to My Fat

Chalk it up to the pandemic (a YEAR now), quarantine, winter (it’s -9 this morning…yes, you read that right), or a complete lack of my favorite foods—carbs—because I’m 8 months into yet ANOTHER diet. Or, as diet gurus like to say nowadays, “WOE” or “way of eating.” WOE is accurate, too, as in woe is me. Whatever the cause, my patience is, as Monty Python famously said, “wafer thin.” And I realize that often, this blog is a way for me to articulate and examine my own frustrations, so…I wanna talk about FAT. AGAIN.

In America at least, we’re obsessed with weight. In fact, weight has almost become a habitual conversation starter. Eavesdrop on any discussion, watch TV for an hour, go to the doctor FOR ANYTHING, and there it is—she’s gained weight…he’s lost weight…she looks better thinner/fatter…have you SEEN how much she’s gained/lost…her face looks puffy…his face is too thin…that shirt makes her/him look too fat/thin, please step on the scale IMMEDIATELY.

We don’t care, or at least not as MUCH, about a person’s soul, needs, accomplishments (unless they’re weight related), compassion, back-stabbiness, decoupage skillz, or their ability to ID sharp-shinned hawks at 350 yards. We care about their weight gain/loss ratio. Their "before" and "after." And of course, women are disproportionately targeted for fat comments and shaming, but that’s another can of vipers, and you DON’T want to get me started…

I’m someone who was thin and wispy until my child-bearing years. Then, by INTELLIGENT DESIGN, I packed on reserves: If I had to survive an Arctic blizzard, by the thunder gods I’d be able to keep my offspring warm until spring. And if the mister missed his wildebeest and couldn’t bring home the bacon, I’d still be able to nurse the babies, thanks to my body’s voluminous fat warehouse. Or, if a mastodon mashed the mister, I’d have that healthy, baby-factory bod the other men would club each other for, et voilà, I’d get my genes passed on.

Which Adele is happier? kinder? most compassionate?

I’m laughing a little, but I’m also noticing that the people who MAKE all these remarks—who JUDGE others by their kilos and stones—are almost always THIN, and effortlessly so. Or, they’ve worked their arses off to ACHIEVE thinness and now have the right to judge every poor fat slob who hasn’t, kind of like the way people who inherit money bitch about poor folks needing to “pull themselves up” by their fictitious bootstraps. Forget that weight is usually an amalgam of any number of 1734 contributing factors—genetics, hormones, unrelenting stress, insecurity, psychology, sexual abuse, occupation, co-conditions, illness, medications, other traumas, social and familial conditioning, weather, olfactory memories, cell memory, barometric pressure, natural Girl Scout Cookie resistance, past life experience…you name it.

Also, I DO NOT want you or anyone else feeling sorry for me. I'm avoiding carbs to keep my triglycerides and blood sugar down, and I've lost like 5 lbs, which, for you skinny people, is like not eating that ONE Dorito. I know it's hard for thin people to believe, but I LIKE my body. In fact, my lumpy, bumpy body has seen me through periods of unromantic hippie poverty, a 30+-year marriage, the births/nurturing of three of the world’s best humans, a 25-year career, and a solo tour of Ireland that yanked me out of my comfy sedentary life and forced me into moving my two feet back and forth ad infinitum as a means of propulsion (I didn’t lose a lb, BTW—probably my Celtic genes hugging that fat like a bag of Twinkies, in case of famine).

You can SAVE your “IT’S SIMPLE MATH,” too: Calories burned ≠/> calories consumed. If humans were a product of simple math and logic, we humans wouldn’t be in ANY of the messes we’re in.

So next time you see a weather man, game show host, old high school friend, person who used to check you out at Hy-Vee, or really, ANYONE, and the first thing you can think to say has something to do with weight, you are a weight-shaming bigot, and I’m gonna stuff all 15 Scottish shortbread cookies (imported from Scotland, not the cheap imitations, because butter) that I carry in my pockets, right in my BIG FAT MAW and make you watch me chew. Very politely.

Retirement: The Becoming Years

RETIREMENT. Holy buckets. Did I ever think I’d do this? No, I thought I’d teach college English till they pried the grading pen from my cold, cramped hand. But as of May of this year, I will retire from my full-time, 25-year teaching career. (I can’t even believe I’ve had a 25-year career, since Inner Me is still in her 20s.)

I’ve been working since I was 14, when I started as an A&W carhop. For those too young to know what that is, I carried trays of food to people’s cars and hooked the trays on their rolled down car windows. In a brown and orange mini dress. I once served fried chicken and root beer to a man who jumped the parking curb, drove his Caddy through the plate glass storefront and up to the counter, then rolled down his window and ordered. When I looked wide-eyed at my boss and asked what I should do, my boss said, “Get him his chicken.” Ah…good times.

From that time on, I had brief jobless stints, but mostly I worked: waitress, fast-food counter, bartender, janitor, lunch truck driver, bank teller, retail clerk, life skills assistant for adults with disabilities, nursing assistant, surgical prep tech, Extension Office secretary, gig musician, and eventually, college instructor. Much of that time, I was also a full-time parent. Sometimes a single parent. Some of that time, I also took uni classes part- or full-time. That’s about fifty years of wearing what is now a sky-high stack of hats.

It’s scary, I’ll admit. This might surprise you, but I am NOT a relaxed person. I am a compulsive, hyper-responsible worker. I’m not good at “idle.” If I haven’t mentioned it before, I suffer from the HHN-i gene (for more on this anomaly read https://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2011/05/rescue-me.html), that makes it super-hard for me to CHILL. But no worries. I’m already busy compiling a TO-DO list for my retirement years (note the timing of some of these depends on our ability to finally be decent, caring human beings and do what we must to tackle the pandemic). In my ideal post-career world, here’s some of what I’ll be doing… 

1. Write. Write. Write. 

2. Read. Read. Read (stuff I WANT to read, not stuff I HAVE to read). 

3. Improve my DAILY meditation practice, my antidote to the HHN-i disorder. 

4. Sing & play guitar/ukulele every day. Work on the uke version of "Smoke on the Water."

5. Hang out with my kids and grandkids until they start dropping hints about "bad fish" or "privacy" or "how much your birds miss you."

6. Take many road trips with Ray: Porter Sculpture Park, Montrose, SD; Spam Museum, Austin, MN; an endless list. 

7. Learn Irish (already started on both Duolingo and Rosetta Stone. After almost a year, I can say “Ta tortair agam” (I have a turtle) and “Ta leabhar si an nuachtan” (she reads the newspaper). Handy. 

8. Travel with Mom, wherever/whenever she gets a hankerin’ to go. 

9. Visit out-of-town family & friends. 

10. Go camping. Camp in the Badlands, and stay up late enough to hear the coyote choir.

11. Get back to my Good Old Irish Walks. 

12. Wait…go back to Ireland! Walk THERE! Pleasepleaseplease… 

13. Knit; finish Christmas gifts by Christmas. 

14. Have long, chatty, catch-up coffees with friends. 

15. Raise canaries. Stare at them. Talk to them. Post a nauseating number of photos of them. 

16. Kayak and garden during South Dakota’s lovely three-week summer. 

17. Perfect my mad napping skilz. 

18. Get down and dirty with Ancestry.com. Find my Irish Donegal ancestors.

19. Teach an online class now & then. 

20. Really clean my house (unrealistic pipe dream). 

21. Unpack the boxes still in the basement from the last move (7 years ago…no rush). 

22. Declutter, unburden, simplify, minimize, downsize. 

23. BE instead of DO. 

It’s a pretty ambitious list, I know (Note to Self: see #23 above). I’m also one of the world’s great procrastinators, so the list could end up on a bulletin board shoved in the back of a closet, behind my senior prom dress (“Killing Me Softly” was the spotlight song), or the fringed leather jacket I lived in throughout the 70s, or the tub of PEZ dispensers (Note to Self: see #22 above). 

In my late teens and early 20s, I had a vision of myself: One day I’d become an idealistic, poor-but-happy, guitar-playing-Joni-Mitchell-singing, recluse hippie writer. Maybe it won’t work out EXACTLY as I imagined, but I feel like I’m about to bring that vision to life. And it only took me a lifetime. ;)